U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,155 has disclosed a tubular barrier discharge lamp with at least one inner electrode in strip form. One end of the tubular discharge vessel of the lamp is closed off in a gastight manner by a stopper which is fused to part of the inner wall of the discharge vessel by means of soldering glass. The strip-like inner electrode runs to the outside as a supply conductor, through the soldering glass. One drawback is that an additional soldering glass layer, as a gastight joining means, is required between stopper and vessel wall. Moreover, it is necessary to maintain tight tolerances in order to minimize scrap caused by leaks at the stopper seal.
US-A 2002/0163306 has disclosed a tubular barrier discharge lamp with inner electrodes in strip form. At the end of the electrode leadthroughs, the discharge tube is closed off in a gastight manner with the aid of a disk-like closure element which does not use any connecting means. For this purpose, at this end the discharge tube is provided with a constriction which surrounds the edge of the disk-like closure element in the form of a ring. Then, the constriction and the disk-like closure element are fused together in a gastight manner, with the inner electrodes leading out through this fused joint. A drawback of this arrangement is the relatively high production costs.